Phone It In
by quotelation
Summary: Tony decided that yes, once and for all, this counted as the most completely awesome day he'd had in quite some time. Apparently, though, even cosmic favors have their breaking points. Rated for a reason, but not all that explicit.


_Christmas-flavored._

_Blatantly AU. I started this AGES ago—before we even knew Senior was going to be in town for Christmas in "Better Watch Out," if you can believe it! I like to imagine this is season 12. _

_This is the dumbest, fluffiest smut my mind has ever even considered, so just…keep that in mind._

* * *

Around five o'clock, Tony decided that this particular clear, nippy November Friday was a gift of cosmic benevolence. Partly, this was because the MCRT had gotten to leave the Navy Yard on time, as if they were completely normal employees of the nine-to-five variety. And it helped that the last hellishly hard, two week-long case had finally broken on Wednesday, and Friday's case consisted of nothing more than interrogating an apologetic murderer who'd turned in himself, the murder weapon, and a confession all in one easily-documented go. What put a big loopy pink bow on top of his day, though, was the fact that Ziva had been in an appealingly flirty mood for the entirety of it, and Tony had been able to take her out for a nice dinner and explain over dessert his theory that the gods were smiling down upon them. The fond chuckle he got as a response made him all the surer that the theory was correct—and her hint that she hoped he was prepared to test his hypothesis all night long pretty much cemented it.

Back at his apartment, as they turned on lights between kisses and stumbled toward the bedroom trying to shed jackets and shoes without letting go of each other, Tony decided that yes, once and for all, this counted as the most completely awesome day he'd had in quite some time.

Apparently, though, even cosmic favors have their breaking points, because just as Tony shrugged off his shirt and reached for Ziva's belt buckle, his phone rang.

"If that is Gibbs," came Ziva's muffled voice from somewhere within the turtleneck she was pulling off, "tell him I'm not coming in for anything less than a serial killer."

"It's not Gibbs." An uneasy feeling dropped through his gut and he frowned at the phone. "It's my dad."

The wary look she gave him as she emerged from her shirt said it all: Anthony DiNozzo Sr. was not one to just _call_. Something in the realm of fishy-to-bad had to be going down for Tony to get a call from his dad at nine o'clock on a Friday night. Suddenly Tony felt much older. And much less horny. He sat down heavily on the edge of the bed and accepted the call.

"Dad?"

"Junior! I was beginning to think you'd let me go to voicemail!"

"What's wrong?"

"What do you mean, what's wrong?"

Ziva sank down next to him, pressing into his side and resting a hand on his knee.

"Well, you don't usually call for no reason. Are you okay? Is somebody sick?" A thought occurred to him and he gulped. "Did Aunt Gina—"

Senior cut him off with a chuckle. "My god, Anthony, why the morbidity? Nothing happened. And your great aunt will probably outlive you."

Tony blinked. "Okay. So then…what's up?"

"Does something have to be up?"

He pinched the bridge of his nose. "I guess not. Um, how are you?"

His father launched into a story—something about a bank and a janitor with a punchline Tony smelled well before it arrived—and Tony repressed a sigh and did his absolute best to keep his eyes away from the distracting sight of his girlfriend sitting on his bed in her slacks and bra. A few long, boring moments later, he was contemplating getting up to pour himself a glass of water, when he suddenly felt through his jeans the hard pressure of Ziva's nails digging into his knee. Surprised, he glanced over at her.

She had shed the worry that had creased her countenance just a few minutes earlier, and now looked very much preoccupied with another matter—and, surveying her closed eyes and the familiar set of her chin, he quickly realized what that other matter was. In his worry over the phone call, he had followed the same instinct that had led her to place a bracing hand on his knee, except he'd gripped desperately at her right thigh. And as it became apparent that the phone call was not an urgent matter, his hand, along with the rest of his body, had relaxed. It was strange to look down and see his own hand grasping Ziva's upper thigh, thumb rubbing across the outer curve, fingertips fiddling idly with the inseam of her pants. It was stranger to hear his father's voice in one ear while he leaned in close enough to catch the sound of Ziva's slightly uneven breathing with the other.

He'd been doing a pretty good job of talking himself out of being turned on, but now his body warmed and the lusty thoughts he'd pushed away came flooding back. His gaze fell to Ziva's lips for a moment—"uh huh, yeah," he said when his father paused in his soliloquy—then his eyes traced the lace that curved down between her breasts. They skated over her bare stomach and followed a slim arm to watch how the tendons on the back of her hand flexed as her fingers clenched the dark denim over his knee. Well. This would be a style of phone sex he hadn't tried before, but he found himself willing to give it a chance. He dipped his lips to the silky skin of her shoulder.

She jumped hard enough for her shoulder to crush his lip into his teeth. Painfully. He grunted. "Something wrong, Junior?"

"No." Ziva's eyes were open now, and looking at him almost accusingly. Tony checked to make sure his lip wasn't bleeding. "I just got home. Stubbed my toe in the doorway."

Senior clucked his tongue. "It's past eight. I don't know how you meet people with that kind of hours."

"Yeah, well. I manage." Boy did he ever manage. He slid his hand further up Ziva's thigh, and laughed silently to himself when she clamped her legs together.

_We can't_, she mouthed.

_We can_, his slow smile responded.

He wiggled the fingers trapped between her thighs. She shook her head, but as she bit her lip he saw the corners of her mouth slant upward, and he felt a sliver of triumph.

"Speaking of your work, how's Ziva?"

"She's fine, Dad." The object of conversation cocked her head and cut her eyes at the phone, and Tony nearly had to bite his own lip to keep from commenting on the sly look she cast him. Her thighs relaxed, and so did her grip on his knee. Her fingertips grazed up his thigh, her palm smoothed back down, her fingertips brushed up nearly to his hip, her palm smoothed back down—

"What's she up to these days?"

What an uninteresting question compared to the question of where her hand was headed. "I don't know who she's doing," he said without thinking, and abruptly Ziva's hand stopped moving along his leg as her eyebrows arched high and she smacked his wrist. "What!" he corrected hastily. "I don't know _what_ she's doing." He could see her eyeroll out of the corner of his eye, but her fingers resumed their gentle motions on his leg nonetheless.

While Tony did, in fact, know both who and what Ziva was doing, Senior did not.

Ziva had not been amused by hiding their relationship the precious month when Senior spent two hours of a long layover having lunch with Tony and his coworkers. "It's been a year, Tony," she had said. "Gibbs knows_. Vance_ knows. The girl who takes your coffee order knows. My cousins in Eilat know we are dating! This is not a secret."

"It's complicated," he'd told her, and she had gotten that look on her face that said she'd drop it for now, but they were not done with this conversation. She clearly thought he was creating problems needlessly, and Tony, glancing across the Charger console at her pursed lips and sternly set shoulders, wondered if perhaps she were right. Obviously Dad couldn't stay in the dark forever, and he probably _would_ feel bad for being the last to know, and it wasn't as if Tony expected him to raise any objections. Yet…Tony simply couldn't bring himself to mention it. How to even begin?

"_Hey Dad, Ziva and I are dating. Gibbs said it was okay." "So, Dad, I'm in love with Ziva and it'd be really great if you'd stop flirting with her so much when you come to town." "Dad, remember when you asked when I was going to sweep Ziva off her feet? Done and done! Okay, good talk."_

It was easier not to say anything about his dating life in their infrequent conversations. Somehow it seemed safer, too. If, as Tony had thought thirteen years ago, the purpose of Rule Twelve was to keep teammates' relationship and work spheres of life separate, it had failed spectacularly. The Venn diagram of Tony's close relationships and Tony's coworkers was a circle. Maybe, he thought, just _maybe_ he compensated for not being able to keep work and love and friends separate by being unusually rigid about separating his emotional life from his father. Just like separating egg whites and making sure they aren't marred by even the tiniest drop of yolk, because everyone knows a hint of yolk will ruin the egg whites you're trying to whip up nice and fluffy—

Or maybe Ziva needed to stop turning the cooking channel on and Tony shouldn't have read that article on male compensation when he was bored waiting for his last dentist appointment.

"You need to keep better tabs on that lady," Senior said. "But I think you know that." A car horn blared over the phone, and it suddenly occurred to Tony to ask what his father was up to, but Senior spoke loudly over the beginning of his question. "Anyway, how's old L.J. these days?"

Ziva hooked a finger into one of Tony's belt loops and stood, turning to face him. She tugged. He scooted to the edge of the bed. Her quirked eyebrow asked _that's all you've got?_ When she tugged again, less gently, he stood. Shrugged.

_This what you want?_

"Gibbs," prompted Senior. "Doing well, I take it?"

"Little gruff." She was getting bolder; the way she flicked her hair over a shoulder and casually traced her fingers along her collarbone and down between her breasts to fiddle with the clasp there would've been enough to tell him she had made up her mind in favor of teasing him, but the way she slid both hands around to his ass and pulled him tightly into her still surprised him. He tried not to breathe in too sharply. "Little bit gruff, little bit magic, so 'bout the same as always." His free hand came up to press into the small of her back.

"Abby?"

"She's fine, yeah."

Her hands travelled up his bare back, then dipped back, fingertips delving just an inch beneath his waistband and sending shivers up his spine.

Thank god he'd at least managed to shed the belt before Senior called.

"And how's McGee?"

"Swell," he said, tucking the phone between his ear and shoulder to free his other hand. He settled his hands on her hips, thumbs stretching up to stroke up and down the warm dip of her waist, and she tipped her head up with a mysterious little smile.

"And the good doctor?"

_You're beautiful_, he mouthed, and, pleased, she worked her fingers around to open his jeans and yank them from his hips. He figured she'd enjoy the same treatment, and reached again for her belt buckle—only to have her catch his wrists and force them to his sides.

"Fine."

"You don't have to be so short, son; it's not like I don't know these people."

"Sorry," Tony said absently. Ziva smirked at him; he'd forgotten that her batlike hearing meant she could probably hear both sides of his conversation.

Senior began to recount a news story he'd heard dealing with the Navy, and if Tony hadn't been so absorbed in the way Ziva was standing just out of his reach and peeling her pants off at a slow pace intended to tease him, he would have had to roll his eyes at the several references to police, military, and investigative failures and incompetencies.

Fortunately, watching Ziva's smooth thighs appear inch by inch was a glorious distraction.

When she stood in front of him in only her underwear and necklace, looking like she'd rather like him to pay attention to her now, he flashed her a smirk of his own. _Twirl_, he mouthed hopefully, making a circular motion in the air with one finger.

She raised an eyebrow. But before he could pull off a puppy dog expression, she crossed one pretty ankle over the other and began to slowly pivot, raising her arms to twist her hair up off her neck. He wasn't even closed to being finished admiring the dimples pressed into her lower back or the simple elegance of her shoulder blades by the time she'd made a full rotation and was suddenly moving much more quickly, pushing him into the edge of the bed and swinging her knees onto it. She moved behind him, the fronts of her thighs pressing into his butt and back, and her hands began kneading his shoulders.

Maybe this really was the best day ever. Ziva could usually be persuaded into rubbing his back, but it took some nagging—or heavy hinting, at the very least. He hadn't even mentioned it today.

"Anthony? I think you're cutting out. Are you there?"

Well. _Almost_ the best day ever.

" 'm here."

Senior sighed, and the line was silent for five glorious seconds, during which Tony closed his eyes to bask in the hot feeling of Ziva's skin moving against his. She rubbed up his neck and down his chest, fingers playing with his chest hair while she pressed a kiss just under the ear that wasn't occupied by the phone. He suppressed a happy moan. She suppressed a chuckle.

"Let me ask you a question, Junior," Senior said suddenly, and he lowered his voice slightly. "Are Dorney and McGee…?"

"McGee's _my_ partner, Dad. Dorney's…I mean, Dorneget's great and all, but he's not actually on the team. He's more like second-string."

"But are they…you know."

Ziva dropped her forehead to the top of his head, and he could feel her belly move rapidly against his back like she was laughing. What about, he wasn't sure.

"They work pretty well together, I guess."

"Anthony. Are they _involved_?"

He dropped the phone.

Ziva hopped down and picked it up, covering the speaker. "You didn't see that one coming, Tony?" she whispered.

"Shut up!"

"'McGee's _my_ partner,'" she mimicked.

He swatted her thigh. "_Somebody_ was distracting me."

She snorted. "Tell your father it's your bedtime, old man. I have plans for you."

"Old man, huh?" Tony pushed off the bed, grabbed her around the waist, and tossed her on the mattress. He crawled up after her, kicking off his pants on the way. "Who's old now?"

She gave him a pointed look from her position sprawled on her back. "I allowed you to do that."

"Uh huh. So tell me about these plans of yours, young lady."

She ran a hand from his thigh up his torso to his neck, and pulled him down to her for a brief kiss. Her other hand pressed the phone into his belly.

"Just turn it off," he muttered into her lips, "let him think service dropped."

Ziva pushed him away, her face stern. "Would you rather _I_ talked to him?"

He grabbed the phone. "Dad? Sorry. No, I'm still here—dropped the phone under the couch."

Ziva rolled her eyes.

Tony decided to turn the tables.

"So, Dad," he started brightly, "tell me what happened with that Rose Hill deal." As Senior began justifying a series of actions, Tony stretched out beside Ziva. She watched through half-closed eyes as he propped head and phone on one hand and skimmed the other up her leg. For a moment he fiddled with the hem of her underwear, but instead of removing it, he walked his fingers over the curve of her hip and then let his hand lie still.

She lifted her neck when he stopped touching her, a question in her eyes. He met her eyes steadily. He was confident that every bit of his intentions toward her would be visible there—and indeed, her face softened after a moment and her head relaxed back onto the pillows. He made sure she was still watching him as he let his gaze very deliberately slink over her throat, her breasts, her navel, her hips. One of her legs rubbed against the other. It was a treat for him, getting to look his fill without the pressure of moving things along, or getting dressed for work, or running out of hot water, or being sleepy. He admired the scar on her hip and the rise and fall of her ribcage. He watched her eyelashes flutter, and her lips part, and the muscles in her legs tense and shift. And Ziva began to flush. She liked how he watched her—always had—but the intensity of it was unexpected.

He intercepted her hand as it slid down her stomach and theatrically—albeit silently—clucked his tongue at her, biting back a grin at her frustrated huff.

"Yeah, that sounds rough," he told his father. "What kind of development did they have planned?"

Ziva stared at his mouth, and he felt himself harden at the dreamy look in her eyes, which told him quite clearly that she was thinking of how he took his sweet time with certain other tasks, as well. The thought of it made his mouth water and sent a strong thrill down his belly.

When he managed to focus his eyes again, hers were once again clear and bright, looking into his, and there was just too much there for either of them to drag this production out any longer. She rose, dragging him with her, and hastily pushed her underwear down and off as he moved in close; she guided his hand to her covered breasts and let him flip the clasp of her bra so she could shake it off. He grinned as he took in the determined expression on her face. Sometimes Ziva wanted slow, lazy sex. Sometimes she was in the mood for rough and fast. And sometimes she was happy to go with the flow—so long as they both got what they wanted in the end. And she always made sure they did.

Once her nimble fingers had taken care of his boxers, he couldn't resist: he pulled her in and used his strong hands on her hips to move her against his thigh, where he could feel how much she desired him. Her mouth was hot on his shoulder, on his arm, and suddenly she was moving down, leaving his thigh damp and cold and—oh god, that was her mouth sliding down on him now, with her fingers digging into his hips. It was awkward to reach a hand underneath her body, but he did it anyway, just there—

He touched her. She jerked and he felt her teeth, and he hissed reflexively.

His father's voice in his ear was the last thing he wanted to hear.

"…is everything all right?"

It wasn't easy, what with his brain whooshing down a completely different track and not operating at peak capacity, but Tony thought fast nonetheless. "It's the cat," he blurted. Ziva stared at him.

"The—"

"Cat, yeah. It, uh, keeps clawing my feet. Hurts like hell."

_You did not just say that_, said Ziva's raised eyebrows.

"A cat," Senior repeats. "Huh."

Tony felt reasonably satisfied with this cover-up, and even more satisfied with the way Ziva's face still wore an expression of disbelief. "Yep. A pretty little pussycat," he said into the phone, challenging her with an eyebrow raise of his own and a smirk.

And with that, her expression shifted, and she flashed the slyest and quickest of smiles, and he wondered what she was up to now.

"I thought you had a fish."

"I _do_ have a fish."

"So the cat is…"

"New, yeah."

"Huh," Senior repeated. "I never knew you were interested in animals. We never really had cats or dogs when you were growing up. Didn't you have a rabbit, though? Or…was it a hamster?"

"Yeah," Tony said. He was more interested in the predatory look Ziva was giving him. She would probably have something to say later about the cat thing, but for now she just gave him a long look with narrowed eyes and then her lips curved into a slow smile, and she stretched languorously up and over his body, taking care to slide her skin against his as she moved. He twisted his arm to keep stroking her as she drew her knees in so she straddled his lap, chest pressed tightly against his. She did claw him then, dragging her nails down his sides and her hot tongue up the side of his neck. Whatever his father was saying completely faded into white noise.

He bit his cheek to keep from hissing.

"Meow," she whispered into his unoccupied ear.

"But Billy's Uncle Norman—you remember Norman, don't you?"

"Mmm."

Senior takes that as a yes. "Well, he has fourteen dogs now, and one of them bit the mailman and there was a lawsuit."

"Yeah, Dad, I'm not getting a dog."

Ziva lightly bit his neck, and he jerked back. "What?" he mouthed.

"We could get a dog," she whispered.

He shook his head emphatically.

"You say that," Senior chuckled, a touch condescendingly, "but one pet always follows another."

"See?" Ziva mouthed. He pinched her behind in retaliation, then smoothed a hand from her lovely rear down the side of her thigh and back up to the crease of her hip.

"Anyway, what did you name your companion, there?"

"Huh?"

"The cat. What's her name?"

"Z—" and there he caught himself and stumbled over all the buzzier consonants in the alphabet before choking out "Vee—sa. Visa."

"Visa?"

"Mhm."

"Like…the card?"

"Yeah."

Senior chortled. "If you get a dog, you gonna name it Mastercard?"

"Yeah," he said. "Yeah, sure."

Ziva looked at him with something akin to despair. _I'm sorry about the animal thing,_ he tried to convey with his eyes. _Lie back and I'll make it up to you_.

Perhaps it wasn't the eyes that did it, but she did wind up on her back with him half-draped across her only a few short, enjoyable moments of touching and exploring later.

"So then we can go take a peek at the decorations in the historic part of town," Senior said, and Tony suddenly felt that he'd missed something important, and his hand stilled on Ziva's belly. She opened one eye in displeasure.

"We?"

"When I come for Christmas. Honestly, Junior, what's gotten into you?"

"Dad—_what_? I can't…I, uh—"

"It's a time to be with family, Junior."

"I don't have _room_, Dad." He didn't want to spend the holidays with his father, pretending that they were two eligible bachelors. He wanted to spend the holidays with Ziva. He wanted to spend the entire time with her sitting between his legs with her back against his chest, with a big bowl of popcorn and a string of Christmas movies only broken by dinner at Gibbs's and the office Christmas party and maybe a case and possibly some experiences with mistletoe. And definitely some time spent with him between _her_ legs, sans animated snowmen and popcorn.

Ziva shifted her hips insistently toward Tony's hand.

His father ignored him. "I've been thinking that I ought to bring some gifts for your team," he mused. "The men should be easy enough, but I'm not sure what to bring for those two lovely ladies."

"Dad—"

"Actually, you know, I know a jeweler who does beautiful pieces, very ornate. Vampire-chic, that's how I'd describe it. I could probably talk the price way down on one of his returns, and that would be perfect for the charming Miss Abigail…but for Ziva, I don't know."

"Yeah, she's hard to buy for," Tony said shortly. "But you know she's Jewish, right? You don't need to get her anything for Christmas. You don't have to _come_ for Christmas."

Ziva reached up grabbed his hand, repositioning it in a delicate place and giving him a stern look. He rubbed, slowly, and once again she closed her eyes and arched into his touch.

"Hanukkah," Senior said as if it were obvious.

"Dad, you wouldn't be here for Hanukkah."

"Look, Anthony, I've never known a woman yet who turned down a holiday gift because it wasn't their holiday. Any ideas? Come on, you spend practically eighty hours a week with her."

Tony sighed, and gave the woman of their conversational concern a long, smooth stroke that made her swallow hard. "She likes nice stuff, okay? Stuff that doesn't make her feel like a cop. She likes the opera. She likes Broadway. Ballet. You know, performance art. Or, uh, fancy cookbooks, especially from other cultures. She'd probably like Nonna's recipe for tiramisu, if you wanted to dig that out for her. Oh, and nice scarves." He had a sudden thought. "You know what she'd really like, Dad, are books in Hebrew, and those are a lot easier to find in New York. There's a place in Brooklyn—she likes classics but she has most of those, so I'd go for literary fiction, maybe some fantasy, but don't go near the chick lit. She's okay watching romantic comedies but she's not gonna read about it."

His father was silent, and Tony's eyes focused back on Ziva, who was looking at him with an expression that was simultaneously frustrated, amused, and touched.

"You know, he finished weakly, "classy stuff."

"You've put a lot of thought into this."

Tony's chuckle sounded all wrong to his own ears. "Nah, I just—you know, eighty hours a week, like you said."

"I'm telling you, Junior, I don't know why the hell you aren't dating that woman. She's a lovely and unique young lady, and she's not going to be around forever."

He sucked in a breath. "Yeah, well, that's the human condition, isn't it? We all have to go sometime."

"You know what I mean. Some handsome, rich guy is going to come riding in on a white horse and sweep her away, and you're going to regret not taking a chance with her."

"Yeah. Okay."

His hand had fallen by the wayside again, and it startled him when Ziva laced her fingers with his and pulled his knuckles to her mouth for a kiss. He looked down at her in surprise, and her face was heated and tender as she looked up at him. He badly wanted to tease her nipple with his teeth, to taste the salt of her sweat and feel her scent on his tongue. Had a phone call with his father _ever_ gone on this long? Clearly this was some sort of comeuppance for Senior's general lack of cockblocking over the past thirty years.

He pressed the speaker into the flesh of his shoulder and swooped down to indulge in a deep, passionate, drugging kiss. It took a long moment to pull himself out of it. Ziva didn't help, clinging to his arms and half-rising with him to chase more kisses as he drew back.

He held up one finger—she laid back, tense, her body thrumming with desire—and put the phone back up to his ear. Senior was telling a story about a girl he'd known in college.

He ran his hand down her front, teased her just where he knew she liked it, and she gasped.

"Is that your cat?"

But Tony ignored him, tucking the phone between his ear and his shoulder once more so he had one hand free to press and stroke and tease, and the other free to span her thigh, gripping hard, then to lift her knee for a slightly different angle—

She bit her lip hard as she came, but still a long, low moan drifted through her lips as she trembled against him.

"Junior," his father said suddenly, with an odd inflection, but Tony ignored him completely, too caught up in watching his beautiful partner shake and bringing her down gently. God, how he wanted to suck her swollen lower lip into his own mouth and soothe away the marks her teeth had left. He watched her chest rising and falling rapidly and found himself panting along with her, waiting for her eyes to flutter open so she could give him that look, the slightly unfocused one she always gave him—

"Anthony!" his father's voice rang in his ear suddenly with a scolding tone Tony had not heard in years. "There's a woman with you."

"No," Tony tried to say. Senior would have none of it.

"I think I know what a woman sounds like during…intimate moments, and _that_—that was no cat," he said sternly. "I can't believe you're messing around with some two-date girl this whole time instead of listening to your father."

Ziva opened her eyes, smiling hazily, and focused on him slowly, and Tony felt rather proud of himself.

"I'd've thought you'd be proud of me for following in your tradition of scoring with the ladies," he said, grinning cheekily at his partner, who swatted him half-heartedly with the back of her hand.

"While on the phone with me, though? Really, Junior."

Tony groaned.

His father paused. "Do you need to get off the phone and, ah…take care of something?"

"What? No!" Ziva's chuckle started to bubble up below him and he scowled at her. "That wasn't—it wasn't _that_ kind of groan. _Jesus_."

Ziva laughed harder.

"I can't be positive," Senior said slowly. "But I have a good memory when it comes to beautiful women, and I recognize that laugh."

"No, you don't."

"That's Ziva."

"Aren't you supposed to get deafer as you get older?"

"Ziva's there, isn't she?"

It was indubitably a fact that Ziva was there, spread across his bed with tears leaking out of the corners of her eyes from laughing so hard. Tony sighed. "Yeah, Dad. Ziva's here."

"Are you…doing this regularly?"

Tony felt vaguely offended.

"I mean, are you dating?"

"Sort of." Ziva raised her eyebrows. "By which I mean yes. It's ah, it's been a while."

"How long of a while?"

"A year."

"What the hell, Anthony! Why didn't you tell me?"

Ziva nodded at the phone with a smugly satisfied look on her face, and Tony scrabbled his fingers on the side of her ribcage in retaliation (the advantage of dating somebody for an entire year, after all, is knowing where they are ticklish).

"Well?" his father demanded.

"Must've slipped my mind."

Senior sighed and gave up on him. He asked to speak to Ziva.

Tony disliked that idea. For one thing, his father was a talker, and Tony had other plans for the rest of the night. For another, Ziva was naked, and it would be totally creepy for Ziva to be on the phone with his father naked. He pulled the phone away from his mouth and hissed for her to put something on.

Ziva rolled her eyes to the heavens, and while he gave her a whispered lecture about eyes freezing that way—Ducky said so—she reached for her turtleneck, which Tony snatched up and tossed into the corner, because, okay, there were limits to how modest he wanted her to be.

Now his father was the one laughing, apparently finding their whispered conversation both audible and hilarious.

She shook her head at Tony, but ended up yanking his pullover sweater over her head and settling cross-legged against the headboard, gesturing for the phone.

"Hello? Mr. DiNozzo?"

And her voice was warm and pleased, saying things like "Oh yes, it's good to hear your voice again, too," and "I don't know why Tony didn't tell you," and "why yes, we'd love to have you for the holidays," and "I'll think about that," and then she was silent for a long moment.

Tony fidgeted, picking his socks off the floor and straightening the alarm clock on his nightstand and then straightening it twice more just for something to do, feeling a little weird about being naked himself. He was not close enough to hear anything but the timbre of his dad's voice mixing with Ziva's side of the conversation, and the little white noises of the fridge, and the muffled car-and-people noises of an autumn night in D.C. very soft in the background. But, he thought, it all came together to make this perfect peacefulness in his bedroom, with his families twining in an unexpected way, and really, it was all about perspective, wasn't it? And Ziva was so warm and beautiful up there with her pillow in her lap and the shoulder seams of his sweater hanging halfway down her upper arms, and he really just wanted to gather her up in his arms again, and tell her how much he loved her, just for being there.

As if she knew what he was thinking, she looked up at him, smiling, with suspiciously bright eyes.

"Yes, I'll tell him," she said eventually, and a few seconds after that she ended the call and set the phone on his nightstand. For half a second, Tony was offended that she hung up on his conversation.

"He said to tell you he loves you."

Tony nodded. Ziva gave him another of those warm, tender looks that would be his undoing.

"And he said he will call back soon."

"Did he, now?"

She nodded, and stretched down a bit on the bed, her mouth stretching into a wide smile as he crawled over to her.

He brushed his nose against hers. "Just so long as soon isn't tonight," he breathed, and kissed her.

She pulled him down to close the gap between them then, and the phone call was happily forgotten.

* * *

Later, when they were snuggling, half asleep, Tony remembered it.

"Are we _really _going to entertain my dad for Christmas this year?"

Ziva nodded drowsily. "You'll have to remind me to," she mumbled, then cleared her throat and spoke more clearly, "to get in touch with your relatives and find out what traditional Christmas food is for your side of the family, so I can have it ready."

"Seriously?"

"Mm. You can be in charge of the tree."

Tony tilted his head against hers. It was, he reflected, kind of a big step to host a holiday dinner for your significant other's parent. He was a little bit awed that she was taking it so calmly and, he admitted, completely melted by the fact that she was willing to call up his family members just to make Christmas special and traditional and family-oriented, even though she hadn't had a regular holiday for herself in, damn, probably like ten years. It made him kind of misty, to tell the truth. He resolved to do a better job this year at Passover or Rosh Hashanah or whatever the one her mother had done up properly was. He could do some research online, at least. Maybe buy a book.

"We could maybe have Gibbs over here?" she suggested, interrupting his train of thought. "We'll have to see. He may go to Ducky's." She pressed her face into Tony's chest as she yawned. "I think McGee is going to his mother's."

He used his nose and chin to nudge her face up and find her lips. And if he lived to be a hundred, he'd never stop loving the way she smiled into bedtime kisses when she was happy.

"What was it Dad said at the end? When you got kinda quiet and teary-eyed?"

She gave him a very weak push. "I was not _teary_."

He chuckled. "Okay, whatever you say. But what was it?"

"He welcomed me into the family," she murmured against his shoulder.

And the Grinch's rapidly expanding heart, Tony thought, had _nothing_ on his own. Forget three figurative sizes and try eleven, spreading a warm, toasty feeling through his entire body. He held her tight and closed his eyes, and thought maybe—just maybe—Christmas with Dad and Ziva might be something pretty special.

* * *

_Hope you enjoyed! Thanks for reading!_


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